AUTHOR ARCHIVES

Matt Berman

Matt Berman is a news editor at National Journal. Before joining National Journal, he managed social media on the communications team at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Prior to Carnegie, Matt worked in digital roles at The Faster Times, Newsweek International, Talking Points Memo, and Salon. Matt graduated from the George Washington University with a B.A. in Political Science.

September 19, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blasted the security-clearance process for some government contractors on Wednesday, telling National Journal, "In both the case of the Navy Yard shooter and Edward Snowden, it defies belief that they were given security clearances, given their backgrounds." The shooter ...

September 18, 2013
Officials should not have granted Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis security clearance. The signs were there: a history of mental illness, shooting arrests, and anger-management issues. But still he was cleared. In a letter to Inspector General Patrick E. McFarland this morning, four senators -- Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Ron Johnson, ...

September 12, 2013
No one in Congress gives a floor speech like Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas. He's the Must-Watch congressman, as an early summer speech on the farm bill made clear. On Thursday, Gohmert took to the House floor and gave another whirlwind performance, covering all of the House GOP's favorite whipping points. ...

August 30, 2013
President Obama rarely discusses the nation's vast surveillance and security apparatus by choice. He'd rather talk about lifting families out of poverty, protecting the environment, or modernizing the nation's crumbling infrastructure. But when it comes time to put a price tag on policy values, it turns out that surveillance spending ...

August 29, 2013
Some 50 years after Martin Luther King turned the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, as Rep. John Lewis said, into a pulpit, President Obama stepped onto those same steps and into history. He took the opportunity to talk about not just racial equality, but the economic justice that the original ...

August 28, 2013
Maj. Nidal Hasan was convicted last Friday of premeditated murder in the 2009 shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. The attack killed 13 people and injured more than 30. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, said his goal was to help Muslim insurgents overseas. The conviction made Hasan eligible ...

August 27, 2013
Deadlocked over a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Congress and the White House are flirting with federal default. But that's not the worst of it: as the exact date of default is uncertain, any number of unforeseen events could push our federal finances over the edge. Treasury Secretary Jack ...

August 22, 2013
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who leaked a massive trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison Wednesday morning. Manning was convicted on July 30 of most of the charges levied against him, including offenses under the Espionage Act. He did, however, manage to escape the ...

August 21, 2013
In Arkansas, there aren't enough prison beds for all the inmates. Tasked with housing 14,753 people, the state's prisons have fallen around 280 beds short, with 1,400 state inmates being held in county jails as of Monday. Arkansas's state prison director told the corrections board that there are 300 beds ...

August 9, 2013
At a Friday afternoon press conference in the dead of summer, President Obama announced major proposals to change how his administration carries out national security policy. The president laid out four goals: 1. Reform the USA PATRIOT Act program that collects telephone programs. 2. Work with Congress to reform the ...